CamTrad Talk 1: The World of Intelligence

So I met someone in MI5.  MI - freaking - 5.  Let that sink in for a bit.

CamTrad (the program I am in) has lined up some really cool lecturers for the duration of the program, and this one was really interesting.  I may not have agreed with everything Christopher Andrew (the speaker) said, but it was all fascinating.  Here are just some of the points he made:

Branding of English Intelligence
Intelligence is the only fictional profession where a fictional character is better known than any real character.  Imagine knowing all the Presidents from 24, but none of the real ones. Imagine knowing Nina Sayers better than Natalie Portman.  Imagine knowing every detail of Wall Street but none of the details behind the 2008 financial collapse.  Now think about the fact that you know James Bond better than any spy.  Yeah.  Of course this makes sense - it wouldn't exactly be in a modern day intelligence professional's best interests to be as well known as James Bond - but even historical intelligence characters are far and away less well known than Bond.  English Intelligence (MI5 and MI6) is the only modern intelligence agency with a positive brand name.  Which is really kind of cool.  Andrew recounted a story of one of his colleagues in which the colleague was assumed to be named "James Bond" by a tribes-man of Papua New Guinea simply by nature of being from British intelligence.  Of course, some British spies are way more bad-ass than James Bond.  The "Mad Major" (so named because he was a major and utterly mad) actually shook hands with the Fürher during World War II and was recruited into Nazi Intelligence.  Of course he asked the British Government first, to which they replied "Absolutely, as long as you figure out who else in our organization is spying for the Germans".  By creating a double agent in the "Mad Major", British Intelligence gained invaluable information and accelerated the downfall of Hitler enormously.  It is for that reason that Berlin is not a nuclear wasteland.

Gender Equality in Intelligence
Intelligence agencies are generally able to innovate in ways that traditional bureaucracies cannot.  For that reason there's a pretty solid history of gender equality in the intelligence agencies of the world.  Stella Rimington was the first female leader of an intelligence agency and she was the head of MI5.  Going farther back, Jane Sissmore was recruited at 16 to the ranks of Her Majesty's Intelligence; she went on to become Britain's leading expert on the Soviets and a fully qualified barrister.  So that's pretty cool.

The USA and Intelligence
Here we go.  Readers you know me, I am not a red-neck, die-hard nationalist for The States, but I do have great affection for my homeland.  And for that reason it bothers me a bit when people needlessly rag on the USA.  Yes, we were the last nation to get on the organized, foreign intelligence band wagon and for that reason we have our flaws, but lets be serious, we've never really had neighbors we've needed to spy on (Canada has always posed such a threat). We took Pearl Harbor as a wake-up call to the fact that we needed better intelligence and we have been working on it ever since (although admittedly not to well).  We took 9/11 as a wake-up call regarding Al Qaeda and foreign terror threats and WE TOOK OUT OSAMA.  So please, Mr. Andrew, do not tell a program full of 53% Americans that our intelligence sucks balls, regardless of the veracity.  It's new and we're working on it.  And we killed Osama.